Our Irish language columnist Gearóid Ó Colmáin takes a look at some of the aspects of the word ‘culture’
The word ‘culture’ is probably the most fluid and problematic in European languages. From the Latin ‘cultivare’, meaning ‘to till or cut up’, it appears as ‘cultúr’ in Irish, and ‘Kultur’ in German (although they also use the word ‘Bildung’, which has a slightly different meaning). We find ‘kultura’ in Polish and Slavonic language and, needless to say, it pervades all the Romance languages. But what do we understand by this word? When we say, for example, “this is my culture”, what exactly are we talking about?
We might look at the etymology for a clue. If its basic sense in Latin has something to do with the tillage of the soil, is it useful then to say “this is the soil from which I sprang, these are the influences that made me what I am” or “this is how we till the soil”. But how, then, do I define or delimit these influences, these things that flow into and through me? To be sure, the word ‘culture’ is very broad; it is a generic term which encompasses many different characteristics which make us human, such as language, religion, a shared history, food, music, art and perhaps a common outlook on life hidden in our multifarious manners, codes, and assumptions about ‘the good life’. But all of this is very general. We are still talking about universals when what we are looking for are the specific.
To come back to the Latin again – ‘cultur’ means knife, so culture has to do with the various ways in which we collectively cut up the world, the ways in which we shape nature to our own ends. But then we have the problem of individuality. Although we are all social beings, we are nevertheless deeply individual. One can begin to solve this problem when one realises that the ‘we’ that is mentioned here is a very European ‘we’. That is why anthropologists have travelled to the remotest parts of the earth in an effort to analyse the elementary structures of so-called primitive societies. The notion of being an individual with rights and personal beliefs is relatively new in history. Paleolithic or Neolithic man would not have seen himself as a separate individual with rights and personal beliefs, but as an integral part of the whole, the group of which he was a member. Collective consciousness was vital for the survival of the group in its daily struggle against food scarcity.
The Belgian ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss spent some time with the Borroro and Caduveo people in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. From his observations there he concluded that there were two basic forms of societies in the world: hot societies and cold societies. The developed world can be described as a hot society. Strauss uses the metaphor of a steam engine; just as the energy that drives the steam engine is composed of hot and cold elements, a hot society functions on the basis of different hierarchies. Strauss identifies written language as the essential tool for carving up and classifying the world. It is therefore an instrument of power that enabled mankind to introduce laws and regulations. In short, it enabled people to control each other, leading to the social hierarchies we have today. Cold societies, on the other hand, are those that have mechanisms built into their practices and rituals designed to resist change. Whereas change and a view of history as a linear progression is characteristic of hot societies, cold societies see history as circular, where the present mirrors or is parallel to the past.
Strauss also found that the taxonomies (systems of classification) of cold societies followed a different logic to our own. His study of primitive art showed that it served a different purpose to the classical art of Europe. Classical Greek art, for example, strove to create beautiful representations of things, whereas primitive art aimed to create a system of signs – another visual language. This primitive approach to art has become a central part of what we now call ‘Western Art’ today, exemplified in the works of Picasso, Max Ernst, Paul Klee and many others to the present day.
In the rapidly globalised societies of Europe, all culture is inevitably multi-culture; the food we eat and many of the words in our language testify to this. If you order a coffee with sugar and a café mocha you are speaking more Arabic than English, as the words ‘sugar’, ‘coffee’ and ‘mocha’ are all derived from that language. If I ask “Where’s the shampoo? I’ll be late for yoga if you don’t hurry up with the chicken tikka,” my language is interspersed with Hindi words. But are not the practice of yoga, washing with shampoo and the eating of chicken tikka not part of what we Europeans now consider to be part of ‘our culture’ today? Is it not conceivable that the Polish word ‘sklep’, meaning ‘shop’, will designate a particular type of retail business in our languages of the future?
The origins of our languages already betray our multiculturalism as a process which has continued for millennia. The only difference now is that global capitalism has accelerated this change. Through imitation and borrowing we internalise the languages, customs, and beliefs of others such that we no longer recognise them as other, but as part of what we call ‘our culture’. In this broad sense, a multicultural society is nothing new. What is new is the discourse of multiculturalism – the forum of dialogue and debate through which we recognise and come to terms with this profound aspect of our human nature.
metrogael.blogspot.com / gaelmetro@yahoo.ie
We might look at the etymology for a clue. If its basic sense in Latin has something to do with the tillage of the soil, is it useful then to say “this is the soil from which I sprang, these are the influences that made me what I am” or “this is how we till the soil”. But how, then, do I define or delimit these influences, these things that flow into and through me? To be sure, the word ‘culture’ is very broad; it is a generic term which encompasses many different characteristics which make us human, such as language, religion, a shared history, food, music, art and perhaps a common outlook on life hidden in our multifarious manners, codes, and assumptions about ‘the good life’. But all of this is very general. We are still talking about universals when what we are looking for are the specific.
To come back to the Latin again – ‘cultur’ means knife, so culture has to do with the various ways in which we collectively cut up the world, the ways in which we shape nature to our own ends. But then we have the problem of individuality. Although we are all social beings, we are nevertheless deeply individual. One can begin to solve this problem when one realises that the ‘we’ that is mentioned here is a very European ‘we’. That is why anthropologists have travelled to the remotest parts of the earth in an effort to analyse the elementary structures of so-called primitive societies. The notion of being an individual with rights and personal beliefs is relatively new in history. Paleolithic or Neolithic man would not have seen himself as a separate individual with rights and personal beliefs, but as an integral part of the whole, the group of which he was a member. Collective consciousness was vital for the survival of the group in its daily struggle against food scarcity.
The Belgian ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss spent some time with the Borroro and Caduveo people in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. From his observations there he concluded that there were two basic forms of societies in the world: hot societies and cold societies. The developed world can be described as a hot society. Strauss uses the metaphor of a steam engine; just as the energy that drives the steam engine is composed of hot and cold elements, a hot society functions on the basis of different hierarchies. Strauss identifies written language as the essential tool for carving up and classifying the world. It is therefore an instrument of power that enabled mankind to introduce laws and regulations. In short, it enabled people to control each other, leading to the social hierarchies we have today. Cold societies, on the other hand, are those that have mechanisms built into their practices and rituals designed to resist change. Whereas change and a view of history as a linear progression is characteristic of hot societies, cold societies see history as circular, where the present mirrors or is parallel to the past.
Strauss also found that the taxonomies (systems of classification) of cold societies followed a different logic to our own. His study of primitive art showed that it served a different purpose to the classical art of Europe. Classical Greek art, for example, strove to create beautiful representations of things, whereas primitive art aimed to create a system of signs – another visual language. This primitive approach to art has become a central part of what we now call ‘Western Art’ today, exemplified in the works of Picasso, Max Ernst, Paul Klee and many others to the present day.
In the rapidly globalised societies of Europe, all culture is inevitably multi-culture; the food we eat and many of the words in our language testify to this. If you order a coffee with sugar and a café mocha you are speaking more Arabic than English, as the words ‘sugar’, ‘coffee’ and ‘mocha’ are all derived from that language. If I ask “Where’s the shampoo? I’ll be late for yoga if you don’t hurry up with the chicken tikka,” my language is interspersed with Hindi words. But are not the practice of yoga, washing with shampoo and the eating of chicken tikka not part of what we Europeans now consider to be part of ‘our culture’ today? Is it not conceivable that the Polish word ‘sklep’, meaning ‘shop’, will designate a particular type of retail business in our languages of the future?
The origins of our languages already betray our multiculturalism as a process which has continued for millennia. The only difference now is that global capitalism has accelerated this change. Through imitation and borrowing we internalise the languages, customs, and beliefs of others such that we no longer recognise them as other, but as part of what we call ‘our culture’. In this broad sense, a multicultural society is nothing new. What is new is the discourse of multiculturalism – the forum of dialogue and debate through which we recognise and come to terms with this profound aspect of our human nature.
metrogael.blogspot.com / gaelmetro@yahoo.ie
